Vintage

Ask the public what the Lions do and they will almost certainly cite the work that we do to help those with vision and hearing problems. While it is true that today’s Lions do a great deal more than that, we continue to be what Helen Keller asked us to be: knights of the blind.

An important part of that mission is supplying eyeglasses to needy people in third world countries through the collection and redistribution of used eyeglasses. For the Eugene Downtown Lions Club (EDLC), the person in charge of this effort is Lion Ione Jorgensen.

It is an appropriate job for Ione for several reasons. First, it was a blind member of Lions, Pat Richardson, who sponsored Ione for membership six years ago. It is also a good spot for her because she neither seeks nor relishes the limelight. The job she does is important but less visible than many Lions’ projects.

Ione travels a regular circuit, picking up the familiar yellow boxes used for eyeglass and hearing aid collection from more than 50 sites including community centers, grocery stores, hospitals/health centers, mortuaries, optical shops, and optometrists’ offices, businesses whose managers have agreed to serve as collection centers.

Once she has these glasses, along with used hearing aids as well, she sorts them and discards loose lenses and glass cases along with other interesting items, e.g., shoulder pads, dog leashes, which also get deposited in the yellow boxes. Ione then packages the useable glasses and hearing aids and sees that they get shipped to the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation in Portland, which is a Regional Lions Eyeglass Recycling Center.

Curious about what happens to the glasses after their second sorting by the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation, Ione once visited Brenda Anderson, Program Manager for the Eyeglass Collection and Recycling Program in Portland. According to Brenda, inmates in a women’s prison sort the glasses collected by Lions all over the state, determining the prescriptions they fit. This job pays dividends in several ways. Not only do the glasses get sorted for final distribution; the inmates are involved in a training program, which, if they successfully complete it, can prepare them for jobs as licensed dispensing opticians once they are released from prison.

Lion Ione finds this work satisfying and meaningful, a description she would also use for the work she did before her retirement in ’97. Ione was a school secretary, which, like the work she does in Lions, is a less visible yet vitally important job. School secretaries, as any teacher or administrator will tell you, are key employees. Often, a secretary is the most knowledgeable person in a school, when it comes to how things are done and where to find information.

Ione served in this capacity in a number of Eugene schools for the 4-J District: North, South, and Sheldon High Schools, Roosevelt and Madison Middle Schools, and the International High School. Of these schools, Ione found the International school her most interesting and challenging assignment. She was often involved in proctoring standardized tests for some of the top students. During her last year before retirement, she accompanied a group of students and teachers to Ireland and Great Britain, a trip she thoroughly enjoyed.

After retirement, Ione has continued to travel, making two additional trips to Ireland and to Denmark twice. Having a passion for travel, Ione has ridden a camel in Egypt and has taken numerous cruises to Greece, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and other destinations.

As she looks back on her career, Ione has praise for the caring relationships she saw teachers develop with their students. She was happy to play a role in educating the young and praises the role that schools play in the lives of young people.

Beyond her career and Lions club work, Ione has been a busy wife and mother of four children. Three of her children were born in Canada while her youngest son, Mark, was born here in the US.

Ione’s oldest daughter Vicki works in human resources in Salem, while her younger daughter Kathy spends her days home-schooling her child. Her son Jeffery followed his father into the construction field, and works in Napa, California. Ione’s second son, Mark, is employed by Essex Construction here in Eugene.

Although Ione is no longer married, she and her husband were together for thirty-four years. A native of Canada, Ione married her husband in Calgary. They then moved to Hawaii, where they lived for a year and a half before moving here to Eugene.

These days, Ione remains busy volunteering for the SMART tutoring program. This past school year, she worked at the Cesar Chavez school. When time permits, she enjoys reading. Fellow Lion Twila Butler describes Ione as the “perfect friend” because whenever Twila calls her to “do something,” she “always says yes.”

She is enjoying the Eugene Downtown Lions Club (EDLC) for many reasons. From her first visit, she was impressed with the liveliness and informality of the weekly luncheons. In fact, she used the word “raucous” to describe the atmosphere of these meetings. Far from being critical of this, she points out that most of our speakers comment on what a happy, fun-loving group the EDLC seems to be.

These speakers are one of Ione’s favorite parts of the weekly meetings. She is impressed by the diversity and knowledgeability of these people and has learned a great deal from listening to them.

To those contemplating joining the EDLC, Ione believes that the “camaraderie of the group and the chance to give something back to the community” are the most worthwhile things about this organization. Like many Lions, she shows little interest in personal recognition.

Truly, Lion Ione Jorgensen exemplifies the Lions’ motto: “we serve.”